Earth’s Best Gamer

“It’s too early to celebrate. Judging by what happened to those settlements, these ‘villains’ won’t just attack alien settlements… Moreover, the two characters you mentioned aren’t likely to show up just yet!”

Ji Ye frowned.

He now understood why this round didn’t require competition between different races.

Because the villains created by various civilizations had shown up. These people would even kill one of their own, let alone foreign races.

The racial conflict would only be aggravated between different civilizations.

“The villains that represent the evil side of a civilization is probably what the task means by saying that we ‘need to face not only the competition with other races, but also all kinds of difficulties’.

“But what intrigues me is that the settlements Elder Meng mentioned have all run into foreign villains. Are they trying to stir up internal conflict within our civilization?

“From there, can we deduce that we’re going to meet villains from our own settlement? For instance, Wang Qing and his men from the Water Margin. And is SkyNet going to show up as the villain and create the Terminators?” said Guo Wei, his silver Research Glasses glinted.

“We don’t have enough information for me to answer that question.”

Elder Meng shook his head.

“But since the villains are essentially heroes, I think that given equal opportunity, they would prefer attacking alien races, wouldn’t they?” he then added.

It wasn’t groundless speculation.

There were still over 50,000 Earth settlements in the Land of Inheritance, and only a handful ran into Human villains. The rest of them had encountered alien ones.

It meant that at least the Land of Inheritance didn’t deliberately try to get various races and civilizations to cut one another’s throat.

Otherwise, even the Twin Dragon Mount would be in trouble.

To most people, members of Liangshan were the good guys. However, some of them weren’t exactly genuine heroes.

For instance, Zhou Tong the Little Conqueror, Wang Ying the Stumpy Tiger, Dong Ping the General of Double Spears, and Sun Erniang the Female Yaksha… Ji Ye wouldn’t know what to do if these people showed up as villains and made contact with the Twin Dragon Island.

After all, Wu Song and the others were loyal to their friends and would want to take them in.

Other things aside, at least Lu Zhishen and Wu Song would try to help Sun Erniang, their once fellow Twin Dragon Mount chief in the original novel, for old time’s sake.

…

After some discussion on the new villains and coming up with some countermeasures, the subject of the meeting came back to the Ghostship.

“Based on the fact that the Ghostship has controlled the souls of many Tyrant Lizards and Snake Monkeys, it should have attacked the settlements of the two races and even killed their heads. As a result, they’ve obtained an ample amount of wealth and treasures!

“And I think they did so quite effortlessly without encountering much resistance,” said Elder Zhou.

This Ghostship had mastered the real Transcendent power.

It wouldn’t be very difficult for them to annihilate an Extraordinary Rank-5 or -6 settlement.

Because things had gone too well for them before, the captain of the Ghostship, a villain from the Four-Armed Snake Man, made the attack without sounding out the Twin Dragon Island first.

But he had underestimated the island.

The most powerful Earth settlement wouldn’t be defeated by such soul creatures with obvious weakness. The Twin Dragon Mount had only lost over a dozen men in the battle.

In turn, they had obtained not only the equipment but also the talent of the captain as well.

Ji Ye suspected that these villains had shown up in the Land of Inheritance not just as a test, but they were also here as “treasure messengers”.

Such “treasures” included equipment, resources, and talents.

Just like what Mister Bug said earlier, some of the villains, such as those he listed, were as famous as the heroes, which naturally provided them with great talent abilities.

Such talent abilities would only go to waste on these villains.

It was only right that the talent was inherited by heroes without enough potential. This would then improve the capability of the entire civilization.

Ji Ye even suspected that the inherited talent had more significance than it seemed to be.

“A single force of villains won’t be a threat to us, but I fear that they would join hands and form a powerful settlement,” said Elder Jiao.

“Yes, Elder Jiao has a point.

“I suspect that the villains also have a task to finish, just like us.

“From now on, we’ll keep an eye on the players’ base in turn. Once there’s new information on the villains in the forum, we can go online right away.”

Ji Ye nodded.

Compared to the villains, the players’ settlements doubtlessly had a great advantage—they could gather information offline through the other players.

After that, Ji Ye made the final announcement.

“We’ve obtained a lot of power of providence after defeating the Ghostship, and we’ve replenished the power of providence used when summoning Zhao Yun.

“Moreover, we’ve also obtained three Commander-level Souls of Civilization and a Quasi-commander Extraordinary Rank-7 one.

“Based on the current situation, I’ve decided that we’ll summon a few more heroes later!” said Ji Ye.

The others looked a little surprised.

The summoning ritual would cost a lot of power of providence, and the Twin Dragon Island had reached Extraordinary Rank-9.

Therefore, in the previous meeting, they had discussed the possibility of suspending activities such as the sacrificial ritual, which would cost them the power of providence, so that they could try to be the first to finish the task of advancing to the Transcendent level.

But with what Ji Ye had said, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to accumulate the power of providence anymore.

First of all, they still didn’t know the requirement of advancing to the Transcendent level.

Ji Ye’s instinct told him that it wouldn’t be the same as the Extraordinary level, where one could make advancements simply by accumulating the power of providence.

Secondly, the task had only just started, but they had already run into a villain like the Ghostship, which had thousands of soul creatures. They couldn’t rule out the possibility that they would run into stronger and stranger beings.

Summoning a few more heroes would help them with more complicated situations.

Thirdly, Ji Ye could sense that the power of providence they gained after defeating the Ghostship was a lot more than what they spent during the three days when the time stopped.

They had to sustain the war by means of war. Broadening sources of income and reducing expenditure, that was probably the more suitable strategy for making advancements.

Of course, more importantly, it was because the Soul of Civilization dropped by the captain of the Ghostship, who was a Quasi Commander, had reached Extraordinary Rank-7.

That was enough for them to summon another Transcendent hero.

The only thing they needed to decide was which offering to use.